1980s

Today’s song is Enya’s Watermark from the 1988 album of the same name. It featured in the 1990 comedy Green Card and, randomly, in the animated film Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted! I hope you enjoy this relaxing piece of music for a Sunday.

Today’s piece of music is the theme from the 1983 film Local Hero. Composed and performed by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, the soundtrack includes references to traditional Scottish tunes. I’d not really thought about this before, but I realise that like many Scottish melodies, Going Home is almost pentatonic: rather than playing it in the original D I could have played it in G flat and almost entirely on black notes!

I’m following up yesterday’s Norwegian song with another Scandinavian classic: Abba’s The Day Before You Came was released in 1982 as a follow up to the Visitors album and was actually their last song to be recorded, although Under Attack was released later. According to Guardian journalist Stephen Emms at the time, the “ordinariness [and] universality [of the] first-person account” of a depressing day is what draws the audience in, and “morphs [the song] into an unusually poignant parable of what modern life means”. The song actually came in #6 in the NME Greatest Pop Songs in History countdown.

There is much discussion as to the meaning of the lyrics and whether they refer to the imminent arrival of a lover or the narrator planning an alibi following a murder! Indeed, while the lyrics refer to the mundane happenings of “the day before you came”, the accompanying video seems to suggest that there were several hours unaccounted for: it takes 1h15 minutes to get to work and yet she leaves work at 5 and arrives home at 8. We see Agnetha driving a car at one point in the video, and there’s no mention of this in the song, so what exactly were you doing between the hours of 5 and 8, Miss Fältskog, other than “picking up some Chinese food to go”?

For me, I’ve always thought of this song from a language learner / teacher’s point of view: with lots of examples of “must have” in the lyrics, the sequence of tenses requires a bit of thought if we were translating it from English into another language!

If yesterday’s Laudate Dominum was the sublime, this probably fits the “ridiculous” slot! In response to the request from Lisa, here’s the Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds Theme Tune, in the style of a Chopin étude. Well, sort of! I’m sure there would be a few more runs of semiquavers and it would perhaps be in a more adventurous key, but I hope this brings a smile and conjures up some familiar images. Here’s the real thing for those of you who missed out on this animated classic from the 80s.

Today I’m playing the Abba song Our Last Summer from the 1980 album Super Trouper. It was sung by Colin Firth and Amanda Seyfried (with contributions by Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård and Meryl Streep) in Mamma Mia. Trivia of the day: the original guitar solo features a melody which was reused in Anthem in the musical Chess.

Today’s piece is the 1987 Fleetwood Mac song Everywhere. It reached #4 on the UK chart in February 1987 and then it was released again in 2013 and peaked at #13 after featuring in an advert for mobile phone company 3. And today’s random fact is that S Club 7 sampled the backing track for their song Summertime Feeling from the album Sunshine!